JASPER: #SDOTW for Jan 18, 2015

Sweet Jasper has been in a crowded shelter in a rundown neighborhood for over a month. He came in as a stray, but knows “sit” and “down,” so was probably someone’s pet. Unlike the other dogs in the shelter, Jasper doesn’t bark or howl. He sits in his kennel, and lifts his head at passersby, though most of them don’t stop to look at him, on the hunt for a puppy or purebred dog instead. And so Jasper waits quietly in his kennel for that outlier–that rare human who stops long enough to see the glint in his eye, and the promise of a lasting friendship.

My theory is that homeless and abandoned dogs are a lot like the “broken window syndrome” in low-income communities, and that initially small problems result in wide ripple effects. Stop them from getting worse, and an entire neighborhood, a city, a region, maybe even the world can be changed.